The notes below are designed to give prospective readers an idea of what to expect from the book, and to aid in making a decision on whether to buy it.
Yoga Immortality and Freedom, Mircea Eliade
This book is quite hard to read, but there is definitely a lot of value there if you can find it.
General Notes
Samskaras ‘impregnated’ and ‘residuals.’ Yoga helps to master them. Maya is a magic but temporary illusion.
Man can be liberated from consciousness.
4 kinetic ideas:
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Karma or causality
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Maya Cosmic Vail
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Absolute reality
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Way to seek liberation.
Yoga yokes to get to detachment from matter.
Yoga is a rebirth of absolute freedom via moksha, nirvana, and asamatsa.
Suffering originates in our profane nature. Man is too solitary within the cosmos. Man becomes too solitary with desacralized world.
Supreme knowledge comes from pain and suffering.
Pain is a conduit for emancipation.
In India knowledge is only for liberation including vidya, jana, prajna.
Samkhya (liberation by gnosis) versus yoga (access and meditation essential).
Understanding comes from the sutras or Samkhya. Consciousness of the self. Hope prolongs pain. Despair is happiness.
Man knows via intellect, is buddhi.
Prakti is the primal substance of real and eternal (like urusa).
3 ways of being (gunas) which must be in balance:
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Sattva (luminosity, intelligence)
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Rajas (mental activity, motor energy)
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Tamas (psychica)
Sattva comes from 5 cognitive senses (jnanendrita) and manas (inner senses).
Extremes created and can never be destroyed but you can return to equilibrium.
Prakti is complex. It’s the self not just mental states. States of consciousness come from prakti. Things seems absolute but are not. Spring seems external but it is not.
I want is not the same as the spirit wants.
Spirit and self are both pursuing freedom.
Liberation is being conscious of the eternal freedom.
Reality is not a judge.
Yoga helps one return to prakiti as is suggested in the book of the dead.
Samya yoga - if realized then you move onto the next form.
Jivan mukti - you live in the ‘eternal present’ outside of time and you are liberated from time.
Rebirth gives immorality and absolute freedom.
Everything depends upon what is meant by freedom.
Conclusions are:
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Yoga requires mediation and concentration
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Rituals are a personal experience
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Magic tended to come from the aboriginal Indians. Not today.
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Yogis reverse rebirth via asana, pranayama, ekagrath (fixation of the psycho-mental), immobility and return of the spirit.
This book is very dense, and I would welcome anyone else’s own notes if they would like to add them here.